Cairo is different from any other city under the sun, and after you've
been there when you shet you eyes and see it agin in memory, the
brilliant colorin' sheds its picturesque glow over the brilliant seen.
The deep bright blue of the sky, the splendor of the sunlight, the
dazzlin' white of the buildings, the soft mellow brown of the desert
and the green of the tropical foliage always comes back to brighten
the panorama.
And the crowds of people from all parts of the world, each dressed in
his and her natural costume, every style of dress and every color
under the sun. And the milds of bazars, little booths about ten feet
square but all runnin' over with the richest embroideries, silken
fabrics, gold, silver, amber and everything else gorgeous. Then there
is the new part of Cairo, the broad, long streets lined with
magnificent buildin's. The great Citadel of Cairo and the Alabaster
Mosque up on a rocky height, six hundred feet above the city. The
Citadel wuz built by Saladin in 1100, most a thousand years ago. Where
is Mr. Saladin and his folks? and his dynasty? All forgot centuries
ago, but the work he thought out is here still. The Mosque is the only
building' in the world built of alabaster; it wuz begun by Mehemet
Ali, the great-grandfather of the Khedive. The alabaster looks like
satin, amber and white color, mebby some of my readers have got a
little alabaster box or figger that they set store by, it is so costly
and fine. Then think of a hull buildin' three hundred feet square
built of it. The ruff is uplifted by alabaster columns; the alabaster
galleries are a hundred feet above the floor. The gilded dome can be
seen twenty or thirty milds away. The view from the terrace in front
is so beautiful that you don't want to leave it. The city lies before
you and a long view of the Nile, rich gardens, green fields, towering
palms, the pyramids standin' like ghosts out of the past, Memphis,
oldest city of the world. Turn your head and there is the land of
Goshen; how many times amidst the overwhelmin' cares of a Jonesville
kitchen have we mentioned "Land of Goshen," but solemn now to look at
and contemplate as the home of the patriarchs. Only two milds off down
the Nile is the spot where Napoleon fought with the Mamelukes and won
the Battle of the Pyramids. And jest under you as you look down, you
see the ruff of the Egyptian Museum where the body of Ramesis lays,
once rulin' with a high hand he and his folks, as many as a dozen of
'em, over all the land our stranger eyes looked down on. But now
they're nothin' but a side show, as you may say in a museum.
Josiah wuz dretful took with the sights of shops on either side of the
narrow streets of old Cairo and all sorts of trades bein' carried on
there right out doors: goldsmiths and silversmiths makin' their
jewelry right there before you, and Josiah sez: "I lay out to have a
shop rigged out doors to hum and make brooms and feather dusters; and
why don't you, Samantha; how uneek it would be for you to have your
sewin'-machine or your quiltin'-frames in the corner of the fence
between us and old Bobbett's, and have a bedquilt or a crazy blanket
draped behind you on the fence. You could have a kind of a turban if
you wanted to; I would lend you one of my bandannas. I'm goin' to wear
'em in my bazar when I rig one up, and my dressin'-gown, and I shall
have Ury wear one and sandals. I can make some crackin' good sandals
for us all out of shingles, and lace 'em on with colored ribbins. How
dressy they will make me look. I shall lace my sandals on with yeller
and red baby ribbin, them colors are so becomin' and make my
complexion look fairer. We shall jest coin money out of my bazar, and
I shall write to Ury to put in a piece of broom corn, and mebby we
shall make jewelry; we could make some good mournin' jewelry out of
coal and lam-black."
Well, I didn't argy with him, thinkin' most probable that he'd forgit
it, but Arvilly, who wuz with us, sez: "I guess it would be mournin'
jewelry in good earnest if you made it; I guess it would make anybody
mourn to see it, let alone wearin' it."
"Wait till you see it," sez he.
And she sez, "I am perfectly willin' to wait."
"But I shan't set on the floor as they do here," sez he, "I am sorry
for some of them poor old men that can't afford chairs, and I would be
perfectly willin' to make 'em some stools if they'd furnish the
lumber."
Sez I, "It's their way, Josiah, they like it."
"I don't believe it," sez he; "nobody loves to scrooch down flat with
their legs under 'em numb as sticks." But right whilst we were talkin'
we met a funeral procession. The head one had hard work to git through
the crowd crying out:
"There is no deity but God! Mohammed is his apostle!" Then come some
boys singin' a funeral him; and then the bier, borne by friends of the
corpse and covered by a handsome shawl. Then come the hired
mourners--wimmen--for I spoze they think they're used to mournin' and
can earn their money better. 'Tennyrate, these screeched and wailed
and tore their hair and beat their breast-bone as if they meant to
earn their money. Then come the relatives and friends. Of course, they
no need to have wep' a tear, havin' hired it done. But they did seem
to feel real bad, they couldn't have wept and wailed any more if they
had been hired to. Josiah sez:
"Samantha, when I'm took, if you hire anybody to mourn get some better
lookin' females than these. I had almost ruther die onlamented than to
have such lookin' creeters weepin' over my remains; now some fair
lookin' females such as sister Celestine Bobbett and she that wuz
Submit Tewksbury----"
But I interrupted him by telling him truly that no hired tears would
fall on his beloved face if I outlived him, and no boughten groans
would be hearn. Sez I, "The tears of true love and grief would bedew
your forward."
"Well," sez he, "it would be my wishes."
As we wended our way along we met several water-carriers with leather
bottles, jest such a one as Hagar took with her and Ishmael out in the
desert, and it wuz on this same desert whose sands wuz siftin' in
about us every chance it had that she lay the child down to die and
angels come and fed him. And, also, it bein' along towards night we
met several shepherds; one wuz carryin' a tired lamb in his arms. They
wuz patriarkal in appearance and dressed jest like the Bible pictures.
I felt as though I had met Abraham or Isaac onbeknown to them.
Another sight that impressed my pardner fearfully wuz the howlin'
dervishes--we'd hearn about 'em a sight, and so we thought we would go
and hear 'em howl. By payin' a little backsheesh (which is money) we
got permission to attend one of their religious meetin's. There wuz a
chief or Sheik, which Josiah always called a "shack"--and I d'no but
he wuz well named--and about twenty or thirty howlers in long white
robes. They made a low bow to the Shack and then knelt round him in a
circle; then they bowed agin a number of times clear to the floor and
begun to sing or pray. I d'no what you would call it, but the axents
wuz dretful and the music that accompanied it harrowin' in the
extreme. Then they got up and bowed agin to the Shack and begun to
shake their heads and their arms and their feet rapid and voylent, all
keepin' time to the music, or what I spoze they called music, their
hair hangin' loose, their yellin' fearful, and then they begun to
whirl like a top spinnin' round, faster and faster, whirlin' and
howlin' and shriekin' till they couldn't howl or whirl any longer.
Then the meetin' broke up as you may say, they formed a half circle
agin round the Shack, bowed to the ground before him and fell down
perfectly wore out on the floor. I should have thought they'd died.
Why, I couldn't have stood it and lived nor Josiah couldn't; it wuz
all we could stand to see it go on.
One day Miss Meechim and I visited an American Mission School for Arab
and Egyptian children, and it wuz from one of these very schools that
one of the Rajahs or native princes took his wife. She wuz a little
donkey driver, and the teacher of the Mission, liking her and pitying
her, got permission of her mother (a poor donkey driver of Cairo
living in a mud hut) to take the child into her school. When she wuz
about fourteen years old the Rajah, who had accepted the Christian
religion, visited this school, and the little girl wuz teaching a
class of barefooted Egyptian girls, sittin' on the floor about her.
Who can tell the mysteries of love? Like lightning it strikes where it
will and must. Why should this Prince, educated in England, a friend
of Queen Victoria, who had seen beautiful women all his days onmoved,
why should he fall in love with this little girl, late a donkey driver
in the streets of Cairo?
I d'no, but so it wuz, and he told the lady in charge of the school
that he wanted to make her his wife. She wuz greatly surprised, and
not knowin' he wuz what he said he wuz, asked him polite to go away
and select some other bride. But the next day he come back, sent in
his card and a autograph letter from Queen Victoria, and agin
expressed his desire to marry the bright-eyed little Egyptian.
When the subject wuz broached to her she wep' and pleaded not to be
sold into slavery, spozin' that wuz what it meant. But the Prince made
her understand that he wanted her for his wife, and she consented to
be educated in a fitting manner, and at last the weddin' took place at
the home of the teacher.
The Prince took his wife to London, where she wuz presented at Court,
and makes him a good wife, so fur as I know, and they say she's
dretful good to the poor; 'tennyrate the Prince must think a good deal
of her, for he presented every year one thousand pounds to help on the
school where he found his Princess. This story is true and is stranger
than most lies.
I spoze that from that time on all the dark-eyed little Egyptian maids
in that school wuz lookin' out anxiously to see some prince comin' in
and claim 'em and make a royal princess of 'em. But one swallow don't
make a spring; I don't spoze there has been or will be agin such a
romance.
Josiah said that we must not leave Cairo without seein' Pharo. Josiah
said he felt real well acquainted with him, havin' read about him so
much. Sez he, "He wuz a mean creeter as ever trod shoe-leather and I'd
love to tell him so."
They keep him in the Museum of Cairo now, a purpose, I spoze, to scare
folks from doin' what he did, for a humblier lookin' creeter I never
see, and hard lookin'; I don't wonder a mite at the bad things I've
hearn tell on him; why, a man that looked like that wuz sure to be
mean as pusley. He looked as if he wuz bein' plagued now with every
single plague that fell on him for his cruelty and I d'no but he is. I
wonder that the Israelites got along with him so long as they did;
Josiah wouldn't have stood it a week, he's that quick-tempered and
despises the idee of bein' bossed round, and how Pharo did drive them
poor children of Israel round; ground 'em right down to his terms,
wouldn't let 'em say their soul wuz their own, worked 'em most to
death, half starved 'em, wouldn't give 'em any rights, not a single
right. But as I sez to Josiah, he got his come-up-ance for his
heartless cruelty, he got plagued enough and drownded in the bargain.
He's a mummy now. Yes, as Josiah sez when he looked on him:
"You've got to be mum now, no givin' orders to your poor overworked
hired help in your brick-fields, not lettin' 'em have even a straw
that they begged for to lighten their burden. The descendants of them
folks you driv round can stand here and poke fun at you all day and
you've got to keep your mouth shet. Yes," sez he, "you've got to a
place now where you can't be yellin' out your orders, you've got to be
mum, for you're a mummy."
I didn't love to have Josiah stand and sass Pharo right to his face,
but it seemed so gratifyin' to him I hated to break it up, and I felt
towards him jest as he did, and Arvilly and Miss Meechim felt jest as
we did about it; they loathed his looks, hatin' what he'd done so bad.
But I thought from what I hearn Robert Strong sayin' to Dorothy that
he had doubts about his being the real Bible Pharo, there wuz quite a
lot of them kings by the same name, you know. But Miss Meechim hearn
him and assured him that this was the very Pharo who so cruelly
tortured the Israelites and who was drownded by the Lord for his
cruelty, she knew it by her feelings. And she said she was so glad
that she had seen for herself the great truth that the Pharo spirit of
injustice and cruelty wuz crushed forever.
But Robert said that Pharo's cruelty sprang from unlimited power and
from havin' absolute control over a weaker and helpless class; he said
that would arouse the Pharo spirit in any man. That spirit, he said,
was creeping into our American nation, the great Trusts and Monopolies
formed for the enrichment of the few and the poverty of the many; what
are they but the Pharo spirit of personal luxury and greed and
dominion over the poor?
I knew he was thinkin' of his City of Justice, where every man had the
opportunity to work and the just reward of his labor, where Charity (a
good creeter Charity is too) stayed in the background, not bein'
needed here, and Justice walked in her place. Where Justice and Labor
walked hand in hand into ways of pleasantness and paths of peace. He
didn't say nothin' about his own doin's, it wuzn't his way, but I
hearn him say to Dorothy:
"The Voice is speaking now to America as it did to Egypt, Let my
people go, out of their helpless bondage and poverty into better, more
just and humane ways, but America doesn't listen. The rich stand on
the piled up pyramid of the poor, Capital enslaves Labor and drives it
with the iron bit of remorseless power and the sharp spur of Necessity
where it will. But there must be a day of reckoning; the Voice will be
heard, if not in peace with the sword:
'For the few shall not forever sway
The many toil in sorrow,
We'll sow the golden grain to-day,
The harvest comes to-morrow.'"
But the greatest sight in Cairo and mebby the hull world is the
Pyramaids.
I d'no as I had so many emotions in the same length of time durin' my
hull tower as I did lookin' at them immense structures. It don't seem
as if they wuz made by man; they seem more like mountains placed there
by the same hand that made the everlastin' hills. They say that it
took three hundred thousand men twenty years to build the biggest one.
And I don't doubt it. If I had been asked to draw up specifications I
wouldn't have took the job for a day's work less. Why, they say it
took ten years to build the road over which them stuns wuz brought
from the Nile, and good land! how did they ever do it? No hands nor no
machinery that we know anything about at the present day could move
one of them stuns, let alone bringin' 'em from heaven knows where.
They couldn't have been got into any boat, and how did they do it? I
d'no nor Josiah don't. Mebby the sphynx knows, most probable she duz,
but she's a female that don't git herself into trouble talkin' and
gossipin'. Lots of wimmen would do well to foller her example.
From the first minute we got to Cairo and long enough before that we
had lotted on seein' the Pyramaids, Josiah had talked about 'em a
sight, and told me time and agin that he did want to see the spink, he
had got to see the spink.
Sez I, "You mean the Sphynx, Josiah."
"Yes," sez he, "the spink; I'm bound to see that. I want to tell
Deacon Henzy and Brother Bobbett about it; they crowed over me quite a
little after they went to Loontown to see them views of the spink and
the Pyramaid of Chops. You know I wuz bed-sick at the time with a
crick in my back. I guess they'll have to quirl down a little when I
tell 'em I've walked round the spink and seen old Chops with my own
eyes."
Well, I know lots of folks travel with no higher aim than to tell
their exploits, so I didn't argy with him. And the hull party of us
sot off one pleasant day to view them wonders; they're only six miles
from Cairo. The Pyramaid of Cheops is higher than any structure in
Europe; the Strassburg Cathedral is the highest--that is four hundred
and sixty feet, and Cheops is four hundred and eighty feet high. Each
of its sides is seven hundred and sixty feet long above the sand, and
I d'no how much bigger it is underneath. The wild winds from the
desert piles up that sand everywhere it can; it was blowin' aginst
that pyramaid three or four thousand years before Christ wuz born, and
has kep' at it ever sense; so it must have heaped up piles about it.
The pyramaid is made of immense blocks of stun, and I hearn Josiah
explainin' it out to Tommy. Sez he, "It is called Chops because the
stun is chopped off kinder square."
But I interrupted and sez, "Josiah Allen, this wuz named after Cheops,
one of the kings of Egypt; some say it wuz his tomb."
Miss Meechim sez, "They say it took three hundred thousand men twenty
years to build it," and she remarked further, "How many days' work
this king did give to the poor, and how good it wuz in him!" And
Robert Strong said:
"Their work has lasted while the king is forgotten; labor against
capital, labor ahead."
Dorothy looked dreamily up onto the immense pile and said nothin'.
Arvilly said if she had a long whitewash brush she would advertise her
book, the "Twin Crimes," by paintin' a drunken man in a hovel beatin'
his wife and children, whilst America wuz furnishin' him with the
clubs, and the "Wild and Warlike Deeds of Men" in different wild and
warlike attitudes.
And little Tommy wonnered if he could climb up on it and wonnered what
anybody could see from the top.
And I looked on it and felt as if I could almost see the march of the
centuries defile by its stubborn old sides, and I wondered like Tommy
what one could look off and see from the top, gazing out acrost our
centuries so full of wonders and inventions, into the glowin'
mysteries of the twentieth century.
Robert Strong said that some thought it wuz built for astronomical
purposes, for there is a passage down three hundred and twenty feet
from the bed rock from which you can view the sky.
"And some think," sez Dorothy, "it wuz built to measure distances
correctly, it stands true east, north, south, west."
And Miss Meechim sez, "I believe it wuz built for religious purposes:
the interior passages have many stones and symbols that are a mystery
to every one unless it is explained in this way."
Sez Arvilly, "I believe it wuz made to shet up folks in that got drunk
and acted. Probable there wuz some even in that fur-off time that made
fools of themselves jest as they do now, and old Chops built it to
shet 'em up in, and mebby he wuz shet up in it, too; mebby he took to
drinkin'. I wish I could have sold him the 'Twin Crimes'; it would
have helped him a sight, but I wuzn't born soon enough," sez she,
sithin'.
Tommy stood back a little, lookin' up and seein' some people half-way
to the top, lookin' like flies on the side of the meetin' house,
said:
"I wonner, oh, I wonner who made it and what it wuz made for, and oh,
how I do wonner how they ever got them big stones to the top."
And I sez to myself, "the child is wiser than any of us. He don't try
to measure his weak surmises on them great rocks and problems, but
jest wonders at it all," and I thought I would foller his example, and
I felt considerable better after I gin up.
Robert Strong and Dorothy and Arvilly clumb clear to the top, helped
by Arab lifters and boosters. Arvilly and Dorothy wuz tuckered when
they come down and they both said they wouldn't have undertook it if
they had known what a job it wuz, but they said the view from the top
wuz wonderful, wonderful! and I spoze it wuz, but I thought I would
ruther hear 'em tell on't than to go through what they did gettin' up
and down, and Miss Meechim, I guess, felt so too.
The other two pyramaids in this group wuz smaller than Cheops and
stood not fur away. The Sphynx stands about a quarter of a mild off,
lookin' off towards the east, facin' the risin' sun. I wonder if she
expects the sunrise of civilization to dawn ag'in into her sight.
'Tennyrate she seems to be lookin' out for sunthin'.
There she has sot, meditatin' all these years. She wuz old, old as the
hills when Christ wuz born. What hain't them old eyes seen if she
senses anything?
From Cairo we went to Alexandria, where we made a short stay; we
couldn't stay long anyway, we had loitered so on the journey. Here it
wuz June. Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Nazareth we must visit, and
still how could we hurry our footsteps in these sacred places that our
soul had so longed to see?
Alexandria was considerable interestin' on several accounts; it wuz
the home of Cleopatra, and the home of Hypatia, the friend and
teacher of women. A smart creeter Hypatia Theon wuz, handsome as a
picter, modest, good appearin', and a good talker. 'Tennyrate the
rooms where she lectured on philosophy and how to git along in the
world wuz crowded with appreciative hearers, and I spoze Mr. Cyrel,
who wuz preachin' there at the time, and didn't get nigh so many to
hear him, wuz mad as a hen at her for drawin' away the head men and
wimmen. 'Tennyrate she wuz killed and burnt up some time ago, a-goin'
on two thousand years. Yes, they burnt up all they could of her; they
couldn't burn up her memory, nor liberty, nor the love of wimmin for
talkin', and her stiddy practice on't when she gits a chance, not
bein' able to. But to resoom:
The evenin' we got there Josiah looked out of our winder and see a
camel kneelin' to take on its load, and sez Josiah: "If I could train
the old mair to kneel down in front of the Jonesville meetin' house
for me to git onto her back, how uneek it would look."
Sez I coldly, "Then you lay out to go to meetin' horseback, do you?
And where should I be?"
"Oh, I might rent a camel for you from some circus; you know what big
loads camels can take on, they can carry a ton or more, and it could
carry you all right."
I despise such talk, I don't weigh nigh so much as he makes out.
But Josiah went on, "I d'no but a camel could carry both on us, I
wouldn't add much to the load, I don't weigh very hefty."
"No," sez I, "you're not very hefty anyway."
But good land! I knew he couldn't rent any camel; circuses need 'em
more than we do.
The next day we all went out to see Pompey's Piller which we had seen
towerin' up before we landed, all on 'em ridin' donkeys but me, but I
not being much of a hand to ride on any critter's back, preferred to
go in a chair with long poles on each side, carried by four Arabs.
Pompey's Piller is most a hundred feet high. Cleopatra's Needles wuz
brought from Heliopolis. One is standing; the other, which lay for a
long time nearly embedded in the drifting sand, wuz given as a present
by Egypt to America, where it stands now in Central Park, New York. To
see the mate to it here made us feel well acquainted with it and
kinder neighborly. But we couldn't read the strange writin' on it to
save our life. Some say that they wuz raised by Cleopatra in honor of
the birth of her son, Cæsarion. But I d'no if she laid out to write
about it so's I could read it, she'd ort to write plainer; I couldn't
make out a word on't nor Josiah couldn't.
Cleopatra wuz dretful good lookin', I spoze, and a universal favorite
with the opposite sect. But I never approved of her actions, and I
wished as I stood there by that piller of hern that I could gin her a
real good talkin' to. I would say to her:
"Cleopatra," sez I, "you little know what you're a-doin'. Mebby there
wouldn't be so many Dakota and Chicago divorces in 1905 if it wuzn't
for your cuttin' up and actin' in B. C. I'd say stealin' is stealin',
and some wimmen think it is worse to steal their husbands away from
'em than it would be to steal ten pounds of butter out of their
suller. And that, mom, would shet any woman up in jail as you well
know. And you know, Cleopatra," sez I, "jest how you went on and
behaved, and your example is a-floatin' down the River of Time to-day,
same as you sailed down the Sydnus in that barge of yourn. And to-day
your descendants or influence posterity sail down the River of Time in
picture hats and feather boas, makin' up eyes and castin' languishin'
glances towards poor unguarded men till they steal their hearts and
souls right out of their bodies; steal all the sweetness and
brightness out of some poor overworked woman's life, and if they don't
take the body of their husband nothin' is said or done. Good land!
what would I care for Josiah Allen's body if his love had been stole.
I would tell the woman to take that in welcome sence she had all the
rest. But they sail along down the River of Life, coquettin' with
weak, handsome male Antonys, who had better be to home with their own
lawful Octavias. So it goes." I always hated Cleopatra's doin's. And I
wondered as I looked dreamily at that writin' of hern, if she wuz
sorry for her actions now in that spear of hern, wherever it wuz, and
wanted to ondo it.